Tag Archives: Corporate Tax Rate

They said it wouldn’t happen, but it did: The money companies stashed overseas to protect them from high U.S. corporate tax rates is flooding back in, boosting growth, jobs and confidence in the economy. Thank the Trump tax cuts.

All told, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported, some $305.6 billion returned to the U.S. from overseas accounts. That’s a $1.2 trillion annual rate, and far more than the $35 billion one year before.

The BEA’s analysts explain why this happened: “The large magnitudes (of inward capital flows) … reflect the repatriation of accumulated earnings by foreign affiliates of U.S. multinational enterprises and their Continue reading →

Taxes: One of the talking points Democrats and the left often drag out to justify reversing the Trump tax cuts is that the U.S. is “undertaxed” compared with other nations. A new study shows that’s false.

Everyone from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer to socialist independent Bernie Sanders says they would reverse the tax cuts. It’s premised not on the idea that we spend too much, but that working Americans keep just too dang much of their own money.

The problem is, as a new OECD study shows, that’s not true.

The OECD, the think tank for the world’s wealthiest nations, looked at 12 major countries in Europe, the Americas and Asia. The U.S. finished third in terms of taxes at 18.4% of income. Continue reading →

Taxes: There’s a growing disconnect between the economic benefits spinning off the Republican tax cuts and the poll numbers. Is the public going sour of them? Or is this just more wishful thinking on the part of Democrats and the liberal press?

Just the past week saw three more examples of the tax cuts’ benefits.

Item 1: Kroger announced that it was accelerating wage hikes, increasing the company’s 401(k) match, enhancing benefits, and expanding employee discounts. All, it said, thanks to the Republican tax reforms. Kroger joins more than 500 other companies who’ve extended bonuses, wage hikes, or improved benefits to more than 4 million workers in the wake of the law’s sharp reduction in corporate tax rates.

Item 2: A Gallup poll found that the public thinks the tax code is more fair today than it was before the Republican tax cuts took effect. Just 42% now say middle income families pay too much in income taxes, down from 51% last year. And 26% Continue reading →

Apple Inc. AAPL 1.65% said it would pay a one-time tax of $38 billion on its overseas cash holdings and ramp up spending in the U.S., as it seeks to emphasize its contributions to the American economy after years of taking criticism for outsourcing manufacturing to China.

The world’s most valuable publicly traded company laid out its plans Wednesday in a statement that was full of big-dollar figures, though it said that much of the money reflected Apple’s current pace of spending.

Apple said it would invest $30 billion in capital spending in the U.S. over five years that would create more than 20,000 jobs. The total includes a new campus, which initially will house technical support for customers, and $10 billion toward data centers across the country. It also will expand from $1 billion to $5 billion a fund it established last year for investing in advanced manufacturing in the U.S.

All told, Apple said it would directly contribute $350 billion to the U.S. economy over the next five years, with the bulk—about $55 billion this year, for example—coming from ongoing spending on parts and services from U.S. suppliers. That number also includes the federal tax payment and capital spending.

The Republican tax plan has a lot of moving parts, but its centerpiece is a major long-term cut in corporate taxes. American businesses have been eagerly anticipating these cuts, and 2017’s strong stock performances were driven in part by an expectation in the market that they were coming. Liberal critics are apt to downplay the impact that corporate tax rates have on the competitiveness of American business — but the news from around the globe suggests that our economic competitors are very aware of the threat that the “Trump tax cuts” will lure more business back to the United States, or stem the departures of existing businesses, unless they take steps to keep up.

China: The Chinese government may not share America’s view of how to stay competitive, but it recognizes that the Republican plan improves America’s position. From the Wall Street Journal:

In the Beijing leadership compound of Zhongnanhai, officials are putting in place a contingency plan to combat consequences for China of U.S. tax changes as well as expected interest-rate increases by the Federal Reserve, according to people with knowledge of the matter. What they fear is a double whammy sapping money out of China by making the U.S. a more attractive place to invest.

Pending tax cut legislation will eliminate the federal income tax burden on the average American family earning $59,000 a year. It will halve the tax bill for the average family earning $75,000. And it will allow the overwhelming majority of small businesses to protect nearly one­-quarter of their income from taxes.

That’s the bottom line of the tax bill that needs to be said up front.

Given the critical media coverage of the bill, these benefits have largely gone overlooked. Rather than reporting on its provisions to double the standard deduction, double the child tax credit, and eliminate the 15 percent tax bracket in favor of a vastly expanded 12 percent rate, media coverage has claimed the bill is a gift to the rich. Rather than reporting on the new 23 percent tax deduction for small businesses earning less than $500,000 a year, media
coverage has claimed the bill is a budget buster.

That’s a shame because these benefits would bring long overdue relief to hardworking taxpayers who have borne the brunt of the slow growth Obama economy from which the country is finally emerging. Continue reading →

One in five small businesses, or 22 percent, pay at least $10,000 on the administration of federal taxes each year, according to the National Small Business Association’s 2017 taxation survey. This does not include the money that a business owes the IRS in taxes.

Five percent of small businesses pay more than $40,000 a year on the administration of federal taxes, seven percent pay between $20,001 and $40,000, and ten percent pay between $10,001 to $20,000. The majority of businesses, 67 percent, pay more than $1,000.

Small businesses and their staff also spend significant amounts of time dealing with taxes, whether it be by filing reports, working with accountants, or calculating payroll. Twenty percent of businesses spend more than 120 hours annually. Continue reading →

The Obama administration is highly exercised about “inversion,” the practice by which an American corporation acquires a foreign company and moves its headquarters out of the U.S. to benefit from lower tax rates abroad.

Not fair, says Barack Obama. It’s taking advantage of an “unpatriotic tax loophole” that hardworking American families have to make up for by the sweat of their brow. His treasury secretary calls such behavior a violation of “economic patriotism.”

Nice touch. Democrats used to wax indignant about having one’s patriotism questioned. Now they throw around the charge with abandon, tossing it at corporations that refuse to do the economically patriotic thing of paying the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. Continue reading →

President Barack Obama says it’s “not fair” and “not right” for U.S. companies to set up overseas to avoid taxes. Except when it benefits him politically.

The president calls these companies “corporate deserters.” He says they are “still using all the services and all the benefits of effectively being a U.S. corporation,” but have “just decided” to go through the “paper exercise” of corporate inversion, in which U.S. companies with foreign subsidiaries can reduce their tax bill by becoming foreign companies with U.S. subsidiaries.

“I think it’s something that would really bother the average American,” he said recently, “the idea that somebody renounces their citizenship but continues to entirely benefit from operating in the United States of America just to avoid paying a whole bunch of taxes.”

Many companies are planning to flee the country because the United States of America has the highest corporate tax rate — 35 percent — in the developed world. It simply makes sense for them to do so. They are obligated to shareholders to be as competitive and profitable as possible. Continue reading →

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Frontiers of Freedom, founded in 1995 by U.S. Senator Malcolm Wallop, is an educational foundation whose mission is to promote the principles of individual freedom, peace through strength, limited government, ...